By Smoke Possessed

July 6, 1986|By Robert Kanigel and Tom Yulsman

Smokers don't smoke in order to get lung disease, cancer and emphysema. And they don't light up just to keep addictive cravings at bay. Smokers smoke because it makes them feel alert, or quiets nerves, or helps control appetites -- or just because smoking feels good and not smoking doesn't.

Recent research attributes these benefits predominantly to nicotine, tobacco's prime active ingredient. So despite urgent health appeals for smokers to stop, each puff provides a new, if shortsighted, urge to keep puffing.

Of course this isn't news to smokers. But science is finally discovering the underlying physiological basis for nicotine's potent rewards.

This new understanding helps explain why about one-quarter of all adult Americans still smoke. It's also helping researchers formulate new quitting strategies that attack the problem on all fronts at once: the many short-term benefits and pleasures smokers derive from nicotine, its powerful addictive qualities and behaviors that reinforce the habit. Among the possibilities:

Nicorette, a nicotine-laced chewing gum, shows promise as a way to help smokers cope with withdrawal.

Exercise may provide many of nicotine's re

wards -- mental sharpening and lowering of anxiety -- without smoking's damage to lungs and heart.

An all-fronts attack is needed because nicotine is such a potent and complex adversary. According to pharmacologist Jack Henningfield of the Addiction Research Center in Baltimore, nicotine's addiction potential is similar to that of hard drugs, such as heroin and cocaine. Re

lapse rates for smokers are almost identical to those for heroin users who've tried to quit.

Smokers enjoy heightened concentration and alertness from nicotine, but when they try to quit, many experience a rebound effect: The brain gets foggy, unfocused and forgetful. And physically, the quitter feels lousy. But Nicorette gum, now available by prescription, seems to take the edge off the misery -- and with none of tobacco smoke's carbon monoxide, tar and other toxic irritants.

A half-hour of vigorous chewing is required to release 2 mg of nicotine from a resin in the gum. Still, that's enough to give you ''jaw muscle ache.'' And nicotine blood levels reach only about half as high as they do among heavy smokers; withdrawal symptoms are damped, not eliminated.

For some, that's enough: Nicorette has improved abstinence rates when combined with encouragement and support from a counselor; weaning from the gum itself is relatively easy. But many would-be quitters who use the gum still smoke at the end of a year. The reason: There's more to it than physical addiction.

The allure of lighting up can be strong. ''There's no doubt that smoking favorably changes performance and mood for brief periods, typically 15 minutes to a half hour,'' says psychologist Ovide Pomerleau, director of behavioral medicine at the University of Michigan School of Medicine. By lighting up, the smoker can induce small, short-lived psychophysiological changes at will. A hit reaches the brain within seven seconds of inhaling, faster even than an intravenous drug.

With a relatively small dose, the smoker may feel sharp, focused, alert. This state of arousal is unlike that induced by other stimulant drugs. The pattern of overall brain activity, as measured by an EEG, is similar to patterns produced by environmental stimulants such as pleasing sights and sounds.

But smokers needn't sacrifice health to enjoy these rewards. Exercise is a great way to become alert and relaxed. And it may help people quit smoking. ''In treating hundreds of smokers,'' says Pomerleau, ''the ones who participated in aerobic exercise were most likely to quit.''

Exercise, Pomerleau says, boosts hormones called catecholamines, causing ''increased alertness and feelings of sharpness.'' And when the exercise is sustained, endorphins are produced. The result is a pleasant, relaxed, logy feeling.

''Exercise isn't as handy as lighting a cigarette,'' Pomerleau concedes. ''But if you work out regularly, your ability to produce the catecholamines and endorphins is enhanced, so when you need them, they're there.''